Emily Ratajkowski has accused Netflix’s new Marilyn Monroe biopic of “festishising female pain”.
Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s 1999 fictional book about the actor, Netflix described the film as a “portrait” of her life that “boldly reimagines the tumultuous private life of the Hollywood legend – and the price she paid for fame”.
Since its release on 16 September, however, Blonde has been accused by viewers and reviewers of being an exploitative and oversexualised retelling of Monroe’s story. Planned Parenthood have also criticised the film as “anti-abortion propaganda”.
Now Ratajkowski, 31, has leant her own “anger” to the push back against Andrew Dominik’s new film.
Posting to TikTok on Friday (30 September), the model said: “I’m not surprised to hear that it’s yet another movie fetishising female pain, even in death.”
Citing society’s collective preoccupation with the lives and deaths of figures like Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears and Princess Diana, Ratajkowski explained that “we love to fetishise female pain … We obsess over dead girls and serial killers”.
The My Body author also confessed to fans that “as women – I mean, I can say for myself for sure – but I’ve learned how to fetishise my own pain and my own hurt in my life”.
Ratajkowski said her impulse to do so came from feeling like it was “something that can be tended to,” calling it “kind of sexy” to be a “f**ked up girl”.
“I think we do that in many, many different ways,” she explained. “But I want that to change.”
“So I have a proposal. I think we all need to be a little more pissed off,” she said. “2022, baby, is my b**** era. I think we should all be in our b**** era.”
The model said she plans to “be pissed off” when she watches the film, which stars Ana de Armas, concluding: “I’m just gonna get angry.”
Commenting underneath the video, Ratajowski offered some reading recommendations on similiar matters to her fans.
“I can recommend Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls and Leslie Jamison’s essay ‘Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain’!” she wrote.
